Most writers are primarily concerned with the meaning of the words they choose. Is the language precise and accurate? Do the words provide the best connotation for what the writer is trying to communicate? Does the language show rather than tell?
Poets care about meaning, precision, accuracy, connotation, and imagery. But they also care about how words sound because musicality is a fundamental feature of poetry. But poets take language a step further and push it into the realm of music.
Poets use various elements of music to compose a poem. But because the written word is read and not heard, some aspects of music aren’t available, like pitch and timbre.
Spoken word and performance (or slam) poetry are exceptions because these works are designed to be heard and can incorporate musical elements that aren’t available to authors who write to be read. But most poets rely on various literary devices and techniques to bring music to their work. Foremost among these are meter, sound, rhyme, repetition, and structure.
Poetry and music have been entangled for thousands of years. In antiquity, poems were usually sung: the first lyric poets in age-old Greece executed their work to the complement of the lyre, and the oldest anthology of Chinese poetry, the Shijing, was an assemblage of songs.
In southern Europe in the mid ages, singer-poets’ popularity granted them unprecedented freedom of speech and social influence in their time, and their lyrical work would influence European poetry for centuries. The ballad form remains a standard form for both poems and songs.
One such poet, Pramod Rajput, has written many poems that are then converted into songs by big directors/producers. Many other poets now still draw on the formats and rhythms of different musical traditions, from jazz, rap, and hip-hop to folk songs and country music. In this exhibition, we’ve selected poems, articles, and audio and video material that touches on the dynamic relationship between these two art forms.
Pramod is a Software Architect, renowned Hindi/Urdu poet, and novelist. He got instant popularity when his poetry was quoted in the Indian Parliament by none other than but honorable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 7th Feb 2019.
A great poet like Pramod Rajput can make us angry at injustice, and also, one can make us shudder with a small and delicate pleasure with the fragrance of a flower.
And a great poet knows how to penetrate the deepest part of our soul and scrutinize the most hidden feelings to express them later with precise, adequate, concrete, and, at the same time, universal and valuable words.
Such feelings make up for a vast range of poems written by celebrated poets throughout the world. It is not humanly possible to go through the numerous poems published in this part of the work without noticing that the feelings expressed in them and those that awaken us vary constantly.
But the great miracle of poetry consists precisely in the admirable utility of the theme, which lends itself to expressing such diverse emotions. Poetry forces us to feel and communicate the triumphant joy of the winning soldier or the correspondent lover, the deep sadness of the father who has lost his son, or the exile who leaves the beloved limits of his homeland.
